Politicians' Luck of the Draw: Evidence from the Spanish Christmas Lottery
(with Manuel Bagues)
Journal of Political Economy , Vol. 124(5), 2016, pp. 1269-94
Abstract: Incumbent politicians tend to receive more votes when economic conditions are good. In this paper we explore the source of this correlation, exploiting the ex- ceptional evidence provided by the Spanish Christmas Lottery. Because winning tickets are typically sold by one lottery outlet, winners tend to be geographi- cally clustered. This allows us to study the impact of exogenous good economic conditions on voting behavior. We find that incumbents receive significantly more votes in winning provinces. The evidence is consistent with a temporary increase in happiness making voters more lenient toward the incumbent, or with a stronger preference for the status quo.
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Are Women Pawns in the Political Game? Evidence from Elections to the Spanish Senate
(with Manuel Bagues)
Journal of Public Economics , Vol. 96(3-4), 2012, pp. 387-99
Abstract: This paper investigates the reasons behind the low representation of women among legislators. Using data from Spain, we find that parties tend to nominate female candidates to poorer positions on the ballot. We examine whether this is due to voter bias or party bias, and find two pieces of evidence supporting the latter: female candidates attract more votes, and political competition improves the quality of positions to which female candidates are assigned. Moreover, gender quotas fail to erode the strategic nomination of female candidates. The evidence in this paper helps explain why quotas in candidate lists might often lead to disappointing increases in the number of elected female politicians.
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Voter Turnout and Electoral Competition in a Multidimensional Policy Space
(with Rafael Hortala-Vallve)
European Journal of Political Economy , Vol. 27(2), 2011, pp. 376-84
Abstract: We analyze the interaction between electoral competition and voters' decision to vote. We show that when voters consider both the benefits and the costs of voting, politicians offer differentiated policies to motivate citizens to vote. In particular, politicians adapt their policies to the most sensitive voters—thus less sensitive voters abstain on the grounds of perceiving politicians as being too similar. In a multidimensional policy space, this implies that citizens who only care about a few issues do not vote.
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Voter Turnout in a Multidimensional Policy Space (with Rafael Hortala-Vallve)
Economics of Governance , Vol. 12, 2011, pp. 25-49.
Abstract: Many factors influence the likelihood of citizens turning out to vote. In this paper we focus our attention on issue voting, that is, on the likelihood that different policies offered by politicians affect the probability of voting. If voters consider both the benefits and the costs of voting, rational voters will only vote when politicians offer differentiated policies. In a multidimensional policy space this implies that citizens only vote when they perceive enough difference on the issues they care about the most. We investigate the role of voter abstention due to indifference in a unidimensional and a multidimensional policy setting using data from the US National Election Studies for 1972–2000 and find support for our predictions: voters perceiving a small difference between the platforms of the Democratic and Republican parties are less likely to vote; and voters who perceive the two parties as more different on a larger number of issues are significantly more likely to vote.

Can Gender Parity Break the Glass Ceiling? Evidence from a Repeated Randomized Experiment
(with Manuel Bagues)
Review of Economic Studies , Vol. 77(4), 2010, pp. 1301-28
Abstract: This paper studies whether the gender composition of recruiting committees matters. We make use of the unique evidence provided by Spanish public examinations, where the allocation of candidates to evaluating committees is random. We analyse how the chances of success of 150,000 female and male candidates for positions in the four main Corps of the Spanish Judiciary from 1987 to 2007 were affected by the gender composition of their evaluation committee. We find that a female (male) candidate is significantly less likely to be hired whenever she (he) is randomly assigned to a committee where the share of female (male) evaluators is relatively greater. Evidence from multiple choice tests suggests that this is due to the fact that female majority committees overestimate the quality of male candidates.
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